Electronic devices such as household appliances, audio-video equipment, computers, and telephones operate within a given environment such as the home of a user. However, these devices function independently of one another. The user must initiate actions on the devices to cause the devices to change to a particular state of operation to thereby perform a function desired by the user.
Often, the state of one or more of the electronic devices is related to the state of one or more other electronic devices within the same environment. For example, a user may be watching television (TV) when the telephone rings. The user wishes to answer the call, but to effectively communicate with the caller, the user must mute the television so that sound from the TV does not interfere with the telephone conversation. Every time a telephone call is to be answered while the user watches TV, the user must again repeat the muting process. For each call, once the user hangs up the phone, the TV must be manually unmuted so that the user can once again listen to the TV program being watched.
The TV-telephone scenario discussed above is only one example. There is an undeterminable number of scenarios and devices involved within a given environment. In each scenario the devices do not communicate with one another and do not coordinate activities, and as a result the user is overly burdened. The number of electronic devices for a household is continually increasing, and the resulting burden on the user to manually coordinate states of the devices for given scenarios is increasing as well.
Controlling the content of media to be played in an environment of devices adds to this burden. For each device of the environment that is capable of displaying media, the user must manually set the rating of media that is acceptable for playback if the device supports such a rating. For example, a user may set a DVD player to not play R rated media and also set a CD player to not play media with explicit lyrics.
Furthermore, if the content control is title specific, then the user must individually tell each device capable of playing the title that it should not be played. For example, a user may not want a particular movie to be shown and must program each movie playback device that the movie should not be shown. Likewise, the user may prefer certain settings when a movie is played, such as a particular volume or screen characteristic, and the user must individually setup each movie playback device to use the preferred settings.
Similarly, some digital media can only be played on devices that have the rights to play it through access to digital rights keys. Digital rights keys are used to prevent the user from playing multiple copies of the digital media on different devices. However, the user may want to play the digital media on one device now and later play the same media on another device. With the conventional manner of providing digital rights for media at one device, the user cannot choose to play the media on a different device.
Therefore, there is a need for content control that involves interaction between electronic devices within an environment to ease the burden of content control conventionally placed on the user.